Posts from the ‘Safety’ Category

The Conversation, 17 August 2017
Any public conversation about on-road cycling in Australia seems to have only one metaphor for the relationship between drivers and cyclists: equal reciprocity. An utterance like “Drivers must respect cyclists’ space on the road” must inevitably be followed by something like “For their part, cyclists must ride responsibly and obey the road rules.”

The Conversation, 18 July 2017
Urban environments are not gender-neutral. Architects and urban designers are increasingly seeking to understand how gender-sensitive design can combat the spatial inequities faced by those who identify as women and girls of all demographics, races and socio-economic groups. Public transport spaces, for instance, incubate many systemic issues. The observable differences between how men and women travel around cities can be attributed to the gendered power hierarchies entrenched in our society. As suggested by a University of California study, this may stem from our long history of gender inequality, which reinforces rigid binary definitions of femininity and masculinity.

The Age, 10 July 2017
By now you’ve probably seen the yellow bikes dotted across Melbourne’s landscape – maybe you’ve even tripped over one. Melbourne’s new bike sharing system oBike is certainly getting some mileage, with pushies popping up on random street corners and flooding bike racks from Richmond to the CBD.

Crikey, 29 June 2017
The slow but laughable retreat by the Trump White House from unsafely consigning some passenger carried devices to underfloor storage on flights from countries where the president has no personal investments continues apace.Read more

The Conversation, 23 June 2017
It’s high time Australia changed its current road user charges for trucks. The shortfall between the charges for heavy vehicles and the money spent on things like road system maintenance, construction costs, road crashes involving heavy trucks, emissions, pollution and urban road congestion amounts to a taxpayer subsidy for the industry of at least A$3 billion per annum.Read more

The Conversation, 14 June 2017
Two hundred years after their invention, bicycles are widely recognised as an effective tool to combat physical and mental health problems, reduce congestion on urban roads and improve the quality of the environment. However, cycling participation across Australia is stagnating. This is mainly because of concerns about safety. A report released last week by the Royal Automobile Association of South Australia found that in the vast majority of crashes the cyclist was not at fault.Read more

The Guardian, 30 May 2017
British Airways’ chief executive says he will not resign despite a “catastrophic” IT system failure that grounded scores of flights and led to cancellations and delays for 75,000 passengers over the bank holiday weekend. Alex Cruz said on Monday he was “profusely apologetic” for the computing glitch, which caused havoc at Heathrow and Gatwick airports, stranding passengers including many families on half-term breaks.Read more

ABC News, 1 September 2016
The wheels are turning on a cycling revolution across Australia. Electric bicycles, known as e-bikes, have surged in popularity as an increasing number of people ditch driving for pedal power with an electric battery boost.Read more

Bloomberg, 11 May 2017
Airlines are preparing for an anticipated widening of a U.S. ban on bringing laptops and other large electronic devices on board planes bound for American airports. Officials from United Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and industry trade group Airlines for America are scheduled to meet with Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly in Washington Thursday afternoon to discuss details of a possible expansion, according to three people familiar with the ongoing discussions.Read more

Straits Times, 8 May 2017
Under-fire United Airlines is in the news again for yet another controversy – this time for flying a passenger in the wrong direction. The passenger, Ms Lucie Bahetoukilae, was supposed to be flying from Newark, New Jersey to Paris in France, but ended up flying more than 4,800km to San Francisco instead. By the time the airline re-routed her flight to France, Ms Bahetoukilae, whose nationality is unclear, had been travelling for more than 28 hours, ABC7 News reported.Read more